


à son pire

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, modern!AU, mostly sad feels :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:35:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not realising that someone might take him seriously (even though he's shit-faced), Grantaire says something remarkably heartless to Feuilly. Bahorel follows Grantaire out of the café, half-intent on punching him until he cries on Feuilly's behalf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	à son pire

Bahorel squeezed Feuilly’s shoulder reassuringly as he slipped out of the café after Grantaire. No one batted an eye — Bahorel hadn’t given off any sign that he was actually livid and potentially about to break Grantaire’s neck. Even Feuilly didn’t consider it — but his mind was still stuck on the unpleasantness of those words. 

“How much do you really care about art, anyway?” Grantaire had asked. “If you really wanted to pursue it professionally, you’d have tried.”

He hadn’t meant for it to hurt. 

Feuilly kept his hands under the table so he couldn’t stare at the paint, and the cuts, and the burns he’d accrued on the job. His work wasn’t art. It was something artistic, but it wasn’t art — and it was all he had. 

He didn’t have time to do anything Grantaire would consider real. 

He didn’t have enough hours in the day to devote to painting, or drawing, or sculpting — or any of it. And he certainly didn’t have the extra cash to afford art supplies. 

He supposed he could have spent less time out drinking with his friends. But that didn’t seem fair. 

Grantaire wobbled down the street. He was drunker than he’d realised. Enjolras had seen fit to send him home — but Enjolras always did that. Grantaire did his best not to take it to heart.

He didn’t take anything to heart these days. 

He caught himself on a lamp pole and laughed in that dazed, half-assed way of his. 

Bahorel caught up to him just as he pushed himself away from it. 

Two large hands grabbed Grantaire by the back of his shirt and propelled him into the brick-and-glass storefront of a little place that sold bicycles. Grantaire would have yelped, but he couldn’t move his feet and his lips at the same time apparently. He just collided with the window and fell over — completely unsure of what had happened. Only when he was sprawled out on his back did he dazedly look up at the street lamp and mutter: “Woah…”

Bahorel stopped next to him and glared down. He was a tall guy in general, but from Grantaire’s hazy point of view, he looked like a menacing giant. 

Grantaire blinked rapidly. “Did I fall over?” He asked, slurring more than half of his words. 

“No,” Bahorel grunted. “I pushed you.”

Grantaire laughed again. To him, it was as if Bahorel had made a joke — and as his inebriated mind rationalised, Bahorel was good at that. Much better than Grantaire was at walking, anyway. He grinned foolishly and held up his hand for Bahorel to help him up.

Help was not coming. Bahorel’s expression hadn’t changed. 

Grantaire dropped his arm to shield his eyes from the light that made his friend seem like a too-glammy rockstar. “What’s going on?”

“You’re a fucking dick.”

Grantaire’s hand fell to his chest. He could understand from the tone that the situation wasn’t good, but his brain couldn’t process why it was bad. His only response was: “…what?”

Bahorel reached down, hooking his fingers around the neck of Grantaire’s shirt to physically lift him up off the ground — and slam him back into the storefront. Grantaire coughed and wheezed as too much air rushed out of his lungs. 

But he didn’t resist. 

He was too confused to resist. 

If he’d been even slightly sentient, he’d have found the dark look in Bahorel’s eyes fucking terrifying. 

Bahorel pushed on his chest just a little harder. Grantaire lost the urge to smile. 

“You’re a fucking dick,” Bahorel repeated. “You’re a drunk, and you’re lucky — because if you’d been even slightly sober, I’d have put my fist through your face.”

Grantaire caught ‘fucking,’ ‘drunk,’ and ‘fist’ and shook his head slowly. 

Bahorel let him go, and he slid down the window like snow melting off a roof. 

“I missed something,” he muttered, as he crouched on the sidewalk. 

Bahorel stretched and popped his jaw. It was the only thing he could do to keep himself from kicking the wall. 

He couldn’t kick Grantaire — not in that state. No matter how much he might have wanted to cause severe bodily injury — the asshole obviously had no idea what had happened. 

And then it was Bahorel’s turn to blink. An idea flared to life inside his head. 

He crouched down next to Grantaire, his head tilting to the side slightly as he considered his options. 

Grantaire looked up at him with red, foggy eyes. 

Bahorel smiled wolfishly and smacked him with an open hand. 

Grantaire toppled over, clutching his face. But the pain had done the trick, he shouted very lucid obscenities as he struggled to sit up again. “What the fuck is your problem?” He yelled — although he wasn’t sure if he should be angry. 

It wasn’t like he and Bahorel didn’t punch each other mercilessly every day. But slapping was new! Slapping was utterly uncalled for. 

“You!” Bahorel said back. He didn’t have to shout. His voice was loud and deep enough to make Grantaire’s eardrums shudder without ‘raising it’ in any way. Courfeyrac called it projecting. 

“What the hell did I do?” Grantaire demanded, still vaguely angry. His sudden, forced sobriety made him aware of the sinking feeling in his stomach — and his avid self-loathing didn’t doubt that he had earned it. 

He compensated with anger and an offended sneer. 

“Do you remember what you just said to Feuilly?” Bahorel asked. 

“No! Jesus Christ, is this really about your fucking boyfriend—” Bahorel smacked him again. “Would you FUCKING STOP THAT!”

“You were an asshole to him, R.”

“I’m an asshole to everyone.”

He’d clearly missed the fact that Bahorel had called him ‘R’ — that this was supposed to be a serious, life-changing conversation, because he was too busy moaning about how half of his face was going numb. 

Even at his kindest, Bahorel hit like a brick wall. 

“You’re not,” Bahorel told him. “You’re never that much of a dick to anyone — and never to us. God, you almost sounded like Enjolras.”

Grantaire swallowed back the surge of bile in his throat. 

“I get it — you’re shitfaced.”

He could taste the whiskey in the worst way. 

“But fuck, man. That was low, even for you.”

Grantaire’s nose flared. “What did I say?”

Bahorel flopped down onto the sidewalk — until then he’d only been crouching, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, just in case he had to rough Grantaire up a little more. 

“You told him that if he really wanted to be an artist, he’d have tried harder. And you know he can’t— he doesn’t have the time or the money.”

Technically very few of them did, but they didn’t have Feuilly’s principles — not even Marius. 

Grantaire ran his hand through his hair, but let it fall right back into his face. 

“How much did you have?” Bahorel asked, almost patiently. 

“No idea.”

He genuinely had no idea.

“You’ve gotta stop, R.”

He couldn’t. He’d tried. He’d failed. 

He shook his head. 

Bahorel took a deep breath. “Apologise to him. Not tonight— tomorrow, before he goes to work.”

“He goes in at 7.” And then Grantaire caught the vicious look in Bahorel’s eyes, and nodded. “Alright, yeah. I will.”

“In person.”

Grantaire moaned. 

“And then lay off the fucking booze.”

“It won’t happen again,” Grantaire mumbled.

“I’ll break every god damn bottle in our apartment.”

If Grantaire had been more confident, he’d have had the heart to protest. But he didn’t. 

Bahorel understood why. He didn’t get it — he’d never really managed to comprehend a lot of the stuff that happened in Grantaire’s head, but he knew it was there — and it was the only thing that had kept him from knocking his teeth out ten minutes ago.

It was the reason he’d followed him instead.

He’d only roughed him up a little because he was Bahorel, and anything less would have been grossly against his nature. 

After a moment of Grantaire staring at the sidewalk like a lost child, Bahorel reached out and slapped his shoe. It was a friendly gesture that time — not potentially life-threatening. “Come on,” he said, even though Grantaire didn’t look up. “Let’s go home.”

“Go ahead, I’m going to take a walk.”

Bahorel stood up, stretched briefly, and then picked Grantaire up and tossed him over his shoulder like a ragdoll. 

Grantaire yelled — but Bahorel never listened when Grantaire yelled. He looped his fingers around his roommate’s belt and set off down the street like this was the sort of thing that happened every day. 

And in fairness, it did happen often — just not quite as frequently as Bahorel made it seem. 

After two blocks, Grantaire gave up. Bahorel patted the back of his leg reassuringly, and told him (with no lack of smugness): “Go to sleep. You have to be up early.”


End file.
